ramblings, thoughts, ideas, eccentricities, spontaneity, life

Author: mollywittier

Most people are not activists, but how can you not be today. You are either with him or against him. I am against him and the rest of his motley crew. Now I am part of the resistance. I didn’t know this on Jan 19th but it quickly became clear to me. But how can one not be. Unless one is part of the group that voted for him, I guess. It is hard to believe how people could vote for him. I have friends who voted for him. It makes me rethink everything. Right now the nation is divided into two parts. Two extreme parts.

Most people are now activists for one side or the other.

I am afraid for my future and my children’s future. And then the Muslim ban happened. And then I became furious. That was it, I was where I needed to be, marching, with a sign. Enough is enough. And that was only one week in.

As if life isn’t hard enough. Now we are going backward in time and need to fight again for the rights we already had. And it makes me dizzy. Which fight shall I focus on? I am passionate about them all.

i don’t want to be home. Too sad. Why are we all forced every year to celebrate, and feel sad if you have lost loved ones or have no body to celebrate with. It is the same in February with Valentine’s day. How about creating some days to celebrate singlehood and single parenthood or just aloneness et al.

No, I did not vote for Trump. Can you tell? I am the artsy type. We don’t often go that way. But there are exceptions.

I don’t know how to make money. I am simply not good at it, as I kind of feel guilty taking people’s money. ( I also feel bad being served by someone in a restaurant and want to say, join us.) That makes me not quite right in the head according to the American way, I realize.

But everything has become topsy turvy. It has been buiding since 9/11. But this year…woah, was a doozy. WTH. There is no sense of what is real anymore. There appears to be no right or wrong. Stupid, arrogant, selfish individuals are promoted and the others look to them with authority.

Call me crazy, but I don’t see this headed in a good direction. We used to know right from wrong. We could teach our kids manners. Ok it is not entirely Trump’s fault that kids today feel entitled, but it is a symptom of where this country has been headed. Seems we have arrived, or is there even further to go.

I can almost no longer fear for anything. It is all so scary and debilitating how are we all seemingly moving forward?

ok did the birthday thing. check. did the the halloween thing. check. did the thanksgiving thing. check. and now the xmas thing.

From September till the new year each year goes by more and more speedy. With aging and having a child, I guess, and the holidays that suddently seem so important, although when I was alone I was able to pleasantly ignore the holidays with watching movies like the Godfather, or seeing friends. When I had a staff job I enjoyed my days off and could lounge in bed, play video games, take a luxurious bath, blast my music and dance around the apartment, go for a solo walk in my then fancy and sophisticated neighborhood. Slowly my life centered on others.

When I was alone, I enjoyed the freedom. Yes I did feel the solitude occasionally and felt lonesome. Since then, occasionally I crave solitude but I rarely feel lonesome.

I have suddenly become an orphan this year. Grieving has taken up a lot of time. Having to take care of all the business surrounding two deaths. And dealing with a myriad of emotions and stifling immobility due to emotions.

Life has become hard in a different way. Life is always hard.

I remember being single with no responsibilits except myself. Oh how I felt so selfish and decadent and spoiled over time. I felt guilty that people needed to do things for people and things were expected of them. My time was my own and I did as I pleased. Boy has that now changed.

The shock is gone. I think. Although yesterday I had been distracted for a few hours and then I suddenly remembered. My heart sank. I had dealt with a few deaths recently. This was another one. The death of what seemed like everything we know to be right and correct. The death of what we see as reality. The death of hopes and dreams and a simple comfort level.

Since 9/11 life has been different in this country. I remember the 90’s and they seemed normal and relaxed. Traveling was good and fun and stress free. Living was stress free. We made good money and could get jobs fairly easily and things were reasonably priced including housing and groceries. Life seemed kind of fair. We were young and would live forever. Or so it seemed.

Then 9/11 and the whole world changed. It was in the air. And slowly with the internet helping, the world became small and scary. Especially if you were an American. Wars began and jobs were lost. People were struggling. People were watching each other and there was a bad guy in our vision. Life became hard. We got older, our parents were even older and getting sickly. We became part of the sandwich generation.

Then there was hope. Then there was Obama. But then there were the haters who did not let him actually be the President and put a stop to letting him help us. It was a struggle. The feeling was in the air. The tea party arrived and slowly but surely it became normal and ok to hate and be rude and all the things we tell our kids not to be.

It seems I spend a lifetime waiting. There is a wait for everything. For instance, right now I am at my child’s dance studio and I am waiting for quiet in the bullpen where the parents sit and the previous class just let out. I am always waiting at some class for the class to finish or for quiet.

When i was younger I seemed to wait less. I didn’t rush to grow up. I was never waiting for that. I didn’t wait to start my career because I always struggled with what sort of career I would have. When I discovered boys, well, I rarely thought about the future, I lived in the now. I loved to the fullest in the now, simply expecting it would always be like that. I now know this is called naivety or immaturity. I think I only matured, and am still maturing, after I had a child and my parents became ill. I didn’t know to wait because I didn’t know there would be any change. Was I incapable of looking ahead? Seems so odd to me now, writing this. How could I not anticipate there would be a tomorrow, a future. had no one mentioned it to me, let alone, taught me about the future?

I guess I never learned to plan or to look ahead or to look forward to anything. This explains my years of drifting, going with the wind, free lifestyle, free spiritedness. I never waited as I didn’t know there was anything to come. Had I only known, maybe I could have, would have, planned. Maybe. Could be. I would hope. But it is easier to look back than to look forward.

When I later lived for my career, traveling and whatever love of my life that I happened to have at the moment, I was just enjoying the now. Perhaps I would wait for the end of the work day so I could go to dinner and a movie with the current love of my life. Or perhaps I would wait for the weekend to come, in anticipation of an exciting, relaxing and fun weekend without a schedule or responsibility in sight. I not only lived in the now, I also lived for myself. It now seems it was a selfish and decadent life, as I since have learned after years of living. And I now also realize that much of it was in my mind. I lacked communication and so I just thought whatever I felt. My emotions controlled me.

These days I wait all the time. I wait at classes. I wait to get quiet at night. I wait to sleep. I wait whenever I have payment for a freelance job coming to me. I wait to pay my bills. I wait to go food shopping, to clean, to do all the humdrum boring things I am not good at. I wait for difficult times to be over. I wait for all to be healthy. I wait to be able to earn a good income again. I wait for peace and happiness. I wait to be understood. I wait for time to stand still so aging will stop. I wait to win the lottery and be able to buy that wonderful, beautiful big house I pass all the time. I wait to make new friends. I wait again to be understood. And I wait. I wait in limbo. I wait.

Nature, we are told, equipped us with all sorts of instincts to help us survive. However, most of them just get us into trouble. Especially the fear response ones. It’s true that we live in a very different world than the primates who evolved these responses, but often what we do when we’re afraid doesn’t seem to make sense even in nature. Let’s take a look at why we’re cursed with some lousy responses to everyday scares.

10. Sweating

Humans are social creatures. That’s why we keep grouping together in big cities even though we clearly hate each other. Exploding into a ball of salty liquid is no good when you are trying to tell a harmless little social lie like claiming you didn’t ding the car door of the big angry man with the baseball bat. And yet there’s always the general adrenal response. When people get nervous their…

Seems time was slower in the past. And it seems my mind could live more in the moment rather than being cluttered with things I must do, have put off doing, am trying to ignore, am trying to prioritize and so on.

I see the beautifully decorated homes that I drive by and wonder how long it took them to put up those lights and decorations. How long will they stay up? And how long will it take you to take them down and put them away. I tire just thinking about it. I can’t imagine having to do all that work for a few weeks or even days worth of display for mostly others to see briefly, for a few seconds as they drive by. Is it worth it?

It reminds me how I don’t understand big functions like weddings. I can not undertand the time, effort or money going into one day’s celebration.

But I have drifted off.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve once again. Next week another new year. I wish it could all be slowed down. I can not pick up speed in myself to keep up with it, if that makes sense. I should be doing more, moving faster, thinking quicker to keep up the pace. Seems time is passing me by and I am standing still. And yet I am aging fast.

The problem with thinking you are young is that one day you look in the mirror and ask what happened, who are you? If you are taken for 10 years younger or even more, and date 10 years younger or even more and you are a woman, that day comes abruptly. Suddenly you, in number, are seemingly upon middle age yet still look like a kid. And all of a sudden you grow up and can not enjoy that in between time and you must jump from young to old immediately without settling for a while in between. And people see you so differently. They react so differently to you. Once you were a beauty and all eyes on you, now you are invisible and a burden. And I am not even yet a senior and this is the case. Invisible is what you are when you are a woman, middle-eged, living in the United States.

So these are my reflections this a.m. the day befoe Christman Eve, 2015.

Today appears to be a lovely mild autumn day outside. The sun is shining, birds are chirping. I sit inside, tired, overwhelmed. I am so overwhelmed I want to go back to sleep. But I have so much to do. The more I have to do, usually, the more I want to sleep.

So much rests on my shoulders. So much responsibilty and so much stress. And I am the only one who can do those things that need to be done. As the tears roll down my cheek, I wonder, can I do it, have I forgotten something that has a time constraint? And I think to myself how much of it can I put off until tomorrow. And pressure is added that the holidays are almost here, and simple fun stuff needs to come into the equation and added to the neccessary tedious things to be done. How much time do I give to each? What balance can I achieve?

Hence, I want to sleep.

But I can not. Too much to do. Busy, busy. Today I will go see my therapist who, for one reason, or another I have not seen in a month. I have managed to survive the month, but the stress has built. I do not want stress to be a factor in my life that will make me ill.

My immediate concern:

1-Shall I rake the leaves now or later.
2-Shall I return library books now or later.
3-Shall I buy bug traps now or later.
4-Shall I pick up prescription medications now or later.
5-Shall I shower today or wait till the next few days.
6-Shall I nap now or later.

Have you noticed I am a bit of a procrastinator?

As the dishwasher and the washing machine and dryer churn.
I sound very much like a homemaker, although that is not part of how I would define myself.

I never understood people when they constantly said they were out doing errands, they were busy doing errands, they could not join me for coffee because they had to do errands. I thought they were making up an excuse to not do something. I think in much of my adulthood, until recently, I had no errands to do. I would think to myself, what is this strange notion called errands. Now I know.

Today starts a new adventure for me. What is it I am looking for. I don’t know or I know too much. I am looking for so much, will this help me get there? Possibly, step by step. What am I saying? How will I approach this, my new blog. What do I want to share. What do I have to say.

So many thoughts cross my mind. Clarity will come with time.

Today I chose to start as these are turbulent times we and I personally live in. How do we and I personally cope? We shall see.

I am all over the place but need to be here. Will this ground me? Will you, the reader get something from my ramblings? Will we go through this together?

On the road, to see what we can find.

I look forward to it. Join me, will you? Let’s now have some tea, shall we?